Fixing the Future

It’s a dangerous sport, predicting the future. But it’s also fun to speculate, and that’s exactly what our authors are doing in GGB’s Annual 10 Trends for 2019.

While you can’t predict the future without remembering the past, you also can’t plan for the future without understanding the present. In this feature, the expert authors gathered by GGB editors explain how different topics will impact the gaming industry in the next year and beyond.

Technology plays a role in several of the stories in this feature. When you think about how advances in technology have changed all our lives in the past 10 years, it’s amazing to consider where it will go. And of course, it’s accelerating quickly.

Some of the trends we see in this feature are predictable: sports betting’s growing engine, in-play wagering; non-gaming amenities and where they’re going; and gambling expansion in Asia, but specifically in Japan; the pressures facing the gaming capital of Las Vegas.

Others are more subtle than surprising: succession plans in gaming companies and increasing regulatory challenges.

And still others are ongoing trends like the increasing visibility and importance of women in gaming and the crossover between tribal and commercial gaming.

So the last year of the second decade of the 21st century will hold some surprises, opportunities and challenges for the gaming industry. Hold on—it’s going to be a wild ride.

TOP 10 TRENDS FOR 2019

1. Ready for 2020?
2. Machine Learning
3. ROI From IRs
4. Play On
5. Changing of the Guard
6. Women Ascending
7. Tribes Go Commercial
8. Rating the Rising Sun
9. Think Big
10. Too Much Too Soon